Continuations

The big news of course isn’t multitasking, or unified inbox, but iAds and GameCenter. These are aimed squarely at making the iPhone (and iPad) a monetizable and viral platform to rival Facebook. Still this strategy seems flawed by being tied entirely to Apple Hardware. What percentage penetration of the handset market can Apple possibly achieve? Facebook on the other hand can reach any user on any device. Well … any device other than the iPhones (and iPads), where Apple can of course exercise...

If there was any doubt, the iPad is a huge winner for Apple with 7.3 million units shipped in the last quarter. Casual observation from flying a fair bit has made that obvious over the last few months. You can’t walk through a packed air plane (and they are mostly packed these days) without seeing a ton of iPads. Most people are watching movies on theirs, some play games and very few do anything else (some email, some web browsing). What one doesn’t see at all – so far – are Android tablets. ...

We were on family vacation through Sunday, so when our iPad arrived via UPS on Saturday nobody was home, which meant that we had to wait until Monday for it to be re-delivered. I wish I could share first impressions this morning, such as Bijan did this morning, but we frankly didn’t get that far. The iPad appears as a beautiful physical object, but when you turn it on it greets you in a very disappointing way: an icon asking you to connect it to iTunes via a cable! What a contrast with my exp...

I have blogged in the past about threats to the open web and what to do about them. It is easy to be dismissive of concerns about Apple’s philosophy of control which necessitates a partially closed system. But there is a real danger in being so seduced by the sleekness of a device and its user experiece that one does not reflect on whether the trade-offs in terms of restrictions are actually worth it. That becomes all the more relevant as Apple is beginning to use control of the playing field...